Social-Media Addiction among Students at Public University

Improvement in data-transfer speed and constant, continuous innovation in software and hardware, and humans’ communication and networking through social-media networking have become much easier and breezier. Complex and data heavy information, such as high-definition videos, can be shared with million other users all over the planet at the ease of fingertips in just 1/1000 th second. For the above reasons, social media have become a handy, crucial, and effective tool for users to propagate and seek useful and vital information. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to identify a relationship between independent variables and dependent variable. The factors that have been analysed include intrinsic reasons, information-seeking and sharing, and social-media addiction. The study was conducted by using a quantitative method by distributing questionnaires to the degree students of a public university in the east coast of Malaysia. The respondents were from a group of students from the total population of 2,007 and the sample size was 327 students. The data from the questionnaires have been analysed by using the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) Version 23. Reliability analysis, frequency analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis are used in the research. The results prove that there are moderate and weak relationships among the variables.


INTRODUCTION
A number of studies on Internet and social-media addiction have tremendously increased. People use social media to seek information needed in the easiest possible way whereby they can learn and gain new knowledge anywhere and anytime (Ellis, Cox, & Hall, 1993). Kuss and Griffiths (2015) have defined addiction of Internet as poor control on behaviour related to computer usage and access to the Internet that leads to negative implications. Countries like China and South Korea have recognised Internet addiction as a public threat, especially regarding to people's health, but support the use of Internet for education, research, and treatment purposes (Cash, Rae, Steel, & Winkler, 2012). Moreover, addiction towards social media can cause psychological problems, financial problems, social relationships, social isolation, and loneliness (Turel & Serenko, 2012). In a survey conducted in Hong Kong by Yu and Shek (2013) has figured out that Internet addiction among high-school students is 26.7%. In the meantime, a study done by Yang and Tung (2007) has found that Internet addicts spend from 8.5 hours to 21.2 hours per week online. According to Widyanto and McMurran (2004), Suzila Mat Salleh, Siti Najihah Hussin, Noor Hafiza Mohammed, Siti Fatimah Mardiah Hamzah, Hani Sakina Mohamad Yusof, Noor Malinjasari Ali Jurnal Intelek Vol. 15, Issue 1 (Feb) 2020 49 the higher the amount of time spent online, the higher the symptoms of Internet addiction (Widyanto & McMurran, 2004).

Social-Media Addiction
Social media are a series of online-communication platforms that are used by societies to communicate and interact between online users. They include the list of websites and applications that are related to forum activities, micro-blogging, and social-networking sites, for example, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, and others (Kuss & Griffiths, 2017). A majority of people in the Internet age use social media as platforms to socialise, communicate, seek information, etc. However, the overuse of social media has led to Internet addiction among users (Vaterlaus, Barnett, Roche, & Young, 2016).
According to Shaw and Black (2008), poor control on behaviour regarding the use of computers and Internet usage is defined as Internet addiction that may lead to impairment or distress among users. In the interim, Akin (2012) has also stated that Internet addiction, which refers to any online-related activities and compulsive behaviour, can interrupt users' normal living and cause negative consequences and stress to their beloved ones.

Intrinsic Reasons
There are many factors which influence students to be addicted to social media. Intrinsic reasons refer to users who use and are addicted to social media in order to gain self-satisfaction. Cash, Rae, Steel, and Winkler (2012) have emphasised that time is one of the factors used to measure students' usage of social media. This means that the more time they spend on social media, the more they are addicted to them. Meanwhile, Turel and Serenko (2012) have mentioned that one of the indicators of positive effects of continuous use of Internet is perceived enjoyment. Moreover, Uysal, Satici, and Akin (2013) have also reported that prolong Internet usage can affect the psychological state of a person's well-being, excitement, and contentment, which match with the context of enjoyment and self-satisfaction.
In the meantime, Shaw and Black (2008) have emphasised a few subtypes of Internet addiction, which include cyber-sexual addiction. This occurs when individuals use social media to watch, download, and exchange online pornography, or get involved in adult pornography. These individuals feel rewarded as they get addicted to social media. Cash et al. (2012) have stated in their studies that these activities support unpredictable and variable-reward structures. This is because many online users believe that satisfaction can be achieved and they feel rewarded when experiencing or watching stimulating contents, for example, sexual stimulation during pornographic activities.

Information-Seeking and Sharing
Morris, Teevan, and Panovich, (2010) have pointed out that social media, such as Facebook, have become an ideal place for searching for information. In a study done by Morris and Teevan et al. (2010), the pros and cons of using social media as a networking tool to seek information, as compared with search engines, have been discussed. It has been found that people like to use social media for social-networking because of their ease of use and almost-instant information-sharing characteristics social media have. According to Wise, Alhabash, and Park (2010), people typically seek information about their friends' real life by viewing voluntary postings on social media. It has become a trend of those people who are active users of social media to view and share their real-life activities. However, Walther, Van, and Kim (2008) have uncovered the fact that the function of social media per se has let people to unintentionally expose and share important information with other desired and undesired parties.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This part discusses about a method that has been used in this research. The methodology involves techniques used, questionnaires design, and data-collection procedure.

Data-Collection Method
A set of questionnaires have been adopted from previous studies, which are from Adiele and Olatokun (2014), Young (2004) (2015). The questionnaires are used to identify the relationship between the dependent and independent variables of this study. The respondents were selected from a faculty of a public university in the east coast of Malaysia. This study involves 327 respondents from a total number of 2,007 people. There are five items for each variable included in the questionnaires. Part A contains demographic, while Parts B, C, and D comprise of questions that use the five-point Likert Scale ranging from 'Strongly Disagree' to 'Strongly Agree', which are related to the independent variables (Intrinsic Reasons and Information-Seeking and Sharing) and dependent variable (social-media addiction among university students). The data have been analysed by using the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) Version 23.
A set of 327 questionnaires have been distributed to the respondents involved in this research and the researchers have managed to collect the entire questionnaires within three weeks' time with a return rate of 98% (321 respondents).

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
10 questionnaires were distributed to respondents for a pilot test. Cronbach's alpha, a measure of internal consistency, was used to test the reliability of all the variables that represent both the dependent and independent variables. Based on the results of the analysis, all the variables show the value of 0.5 and above, which indicate that the reliability of the questions for each variable is accepted (Sekaran & Bougie, 2016). Based on the analysis of reliability, it is confirmed that all the items are reliable. This is because all the variables have good internal consistency as they fall under the range of 0.7 to 0.9. Based on the descriptive analysis of the demographic profiles of the respondents, it is found that most of the respondents are female, representing 54.5% of the sample, while the remaining 45.5% of the respondents are male. Most of the respondents are in the age category of 20 years old, which is the highest percentage (38.3%) among the respondents.   (2-tailed) This research aims to determine the relationship between the independent variables of intrinsic reasons and information-seeking and sharing with social-media addiction. Table 1 illustrates the relationships between the variables. The Pearson's Correlation coefficient result shows that the correlation between intrinsic reasons and social-media addiction in this research is (r=0.410, p<0.01, 2 tailed), which represents a moderate, positive relationship. In the meantime, the correlation between information-seeking and sharing and social-media addiction in this study is (r=0.333, p<0.01, 2 tailed), which represents a weak, positive relationship. R-Square is the proportion of variance in the dependent variable (social-media addiction), which can be predicted from the independent variables (intrinsic reasons and information-seeking and sharing). This value indicates that 37.4% of the variation in social-media addiction among university students can be explained by the independent variables, which are intrinsic reasons and information-seeking and sharing. Meanwhile, the remaining 62.6% of the model is explained by other factors. The R value is 61.1%, which indicates that the deal of variance is shared by both the independent and dependent variables. The F-value, as displayed by the table, is 63.065 and its marginal significant is (Significance Value = 0.000). The result of the two independent variables show that intrinsic reasons ( 0.177, p<0.01) and information-seeking and sharing ( 0.080, p>0.163).

H1
There is a significant relationship between intrinsic reasons and socialmedia addiction H1 Supported P = 0.01 H2 There is a significant relationship between information-seeking and sharing and social-media addiction H2 Rejected P = 0.163 This research aims to determine the relationship between the independent variables, which are intrinsic reasons and information-seeking and sharing, and the dependent variable, which is social-media addiction. The results generated by this paper explain that intrinsic reasons and social-media addiction have a significant relationship. These results are supported by Tosun and Lajunen (2009)  relationship between intrinsic reasons and social-media addiction. However, there is no significant relationship between information-seeking and sharing and social-media addiction. The result is supported by a previous study done by Niemz et al. (2005) which indicated that there is no relationship between information-seeking and social-media addiction. Nevertheless, Al-Menayes (2015) stated that informationseeking is one of the factors of social-media addiction. However, there is no significant relationship between information-seeking and sharing and social-media addiction as the hypothesis has been rejected by this research.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
This paper aims to identify the relationship between the independent variables, which are intrinsic reasons and information-seeking and sharing, and the dependent variable, which is social-media addiction. Social media has brought a huge influence to people especially teenagers. This is due to the fact that the existence of technological advancement may have contributed to the usage of technology, such as social media, to seek information for various intrinsic reasons. In this research, most of the students of the public university have been found to rarely use social media for seeking information. Thus, the intrinsic reasons have been the only factors of social-media usage among the students, according to the research. Hence, it can be concluded that most of the respondents of the research are not dependent on social media and they rarely use social media in their daily lives, which surprisingly denotes that they are not addicted to social media.
For future studies, researchers should include other possible factors related to social-media addiction and their studies may focus on qualitative-research methods to ensure that results can be obtained from different perspectives and other angles. In addition, future studies may also extend their surveys on other faculties or institutions.